The Fire Stone
by My Harp for God
Summary: The cold wind blew again, snaking across the bare skin of Harry's arms. Darkness set around her, speckled and pricked only with stars. The moon rose, shining down full on the solitary girl by the solitary dead fire on the small beach. The waves splashed and slithered up the sand, almost mocking Harry with its foam. She had come so close.


**A/N: Hello there readers. now i know, i should be working on Gakuen Alice, but it's because- okay yeah i don't have an excuse. anyway, i recently read The Blue Sword for the second time (love it even more now!) and at the moment i am about 2 or 3 chapters away from the end of The Hero and the Crown. aah, i love Aerin and Tor and Harry and Corlath so much! 3 3 hugs and smooches to all of them. anywho, _basically_ in reading class, we always have to have a choice reading book with us and sometimes we have assignments to do that involve them. one of those assignments was to get a quote from your book and then use it in the first sentence of an original piece of writing, like a poem or short story or essay or letter to the author etc. i chose short story cuz those are just so much fun! and then i thought, "Hey, why don't i upload it here?" i was a little doubtful if fanfiction even had a Blue Sword section, and i was so happy and surprised when they did! and what's the difference between Aerin Amelia and Lady Aerin? i was adding characters on the New Story page thingy-ma-jig and there were those two... i thought they were the same people... aren't they? anyway here you go :3 hope it's okay... meh, i think it's alright-ish. pleasereviewandokayi'mdonenow!**

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The Fire Stone

"… Out of the firelight came a figure, wavering with the leap and flicker of the flames, and with hair that was fire itself. A tall broad-shouldered figure with a pale face, and in its right hand it held a long slim blade that glittered blue. Harry stared till her eyes felt as dry as sand, and then the figure's face swam into focus, and it was a woman's face, and it smiled at her. But it didn't smile, it grinned, with the wry affectionate grin of an elder sister; and Harry's head swam with love and despair. Then the woman shook her head gently, and her aureole of hair flamed and rippled about her, and she reached out her empty left hand, and Harry found herself on her hands and knees, reaching her hand back."

The woman's eyes blazed yellow gold as she stared deep into Harry's green ones. Their fingertips were just a breath apart, and suddenly a wind began, threatening the fiery figure to be blown away. Harry's heart thudded with fear of losing her, though she could move no more quickly.

"Just a little closer," the woman said, and though she made no noise but the crackling of fire, Harry heard the words directly in her heart, warm and gentle.

The wind lessened and Harry's fingers just barely brushed the fire's heat, but the feeling rushed and spread throughout her body whole like a flame to a summer's dry and dead grass. She shivered from the touch and blinked, and the woman was gone.

"_Aerin!_" she cried, and dropped to the ground, the soft sand of the beach pressing against her cheek, her strength whooshing out of her. She lay in a heap, a hand still outstretched to the once blazing—now only flickering—fire. The figure was gone, and with it the fire and Harry's energy.

The cold wind blew again, snaking across the bare skin of Harry's arms. Darkness set around her, speckled and pricked only with stars. The moon rose, shining down full on the solitary girl by the solitary dead fire on the small beach. The waves splashed and slithered up the sand, almost mocking Harry with its foam. She had come so close.

Silent tears slid down Harry's cheeks, wetting the sand beneath her, and she cried the rest of her strength away and was lost in sleep, the moon staring down coolly at her. When she awoke it was almost dawn and the seagulls were swooping and diving and circling for their morning breakfast, crying out at each other.

She was cold and stiff, and the hand that was stretched to the fire was numb. She sat up slowly, testing her joints and massaging her tingling hand, and looked at the logs that had once held Aerin's fire.

_Aerin_. A pang went through her when she thought of last night and her encounter. She could still remember the golden eyes and hair, and the grin that Aerin had given her, and the touch… She looked to her right hand and the fingers that had been brushed, and looked again, and saw in amazement two small splotchy marks on her skin, one on her pointer finger, the other on her middle. She leaned in and brought her hand closer. The feeling of last night stirred deep inside her, filling her once again.

Harry smiled as she stared at her fingers and at the now spreading marks—though her eyes saw flickering, golden fire instead—and with her left hand she dug into the charred black wood of the fire and pulled out a hard, glittering stone, its color deep and red and translucent like a jewel. Its age far surpassed hers, and it was said that the rock contained fire from the heavens, from the sun that God himself had spoken into being. Whoever had said would've been amazed at how much truth there was to that legend.

She blinked away the fire and saw again the beach surrounding, the gulls crying, the waves crashing, the stone in her left hand and the spreading blotches on her right. The patches now enveloped her first two fingers and were slowly crawling down her palm to her thumb. The more there was, the faster it grew.

How strange, though, that it should choose to spread now: conveniently and just when she woke up, instead of when she was still sleeping on the cool sand—but no matter. All she cared about now was that she had succeeded; she had fond Aerin's ancient red stone and she had started the sacred fire and she had touched one of the Isfahel, one of the Fire People.

She stood, only slightly unsteady, and, slipping the red stone into a pocket, picked up two large black logs from the fire pit and hurled them into the water, the other pieces of wood following suit, and they dutifully sank, disappearing under the sea's smooth glassy surface. The burnt rocks circling the fire vanished too, and soon nothing but black sand remained of the ritual from last night. She scooped that up as well, cupping it in her hands, and flung it into the air, the dark grains spreading far over the beach. She smoothed away her footprints and her fire pit and walked away, all evidence of her being there either at the bottom of the sea or blown away by the wind.

Harry walked and walked on, following a path almost invisible to anyone but her, and was soon at the top of a small bluff overlooking the beach. She sat cross legged, pulled the stone from her pocket, and stared at her hands resting in her lap. The mark was now half way up her arm, eagerly leaping to get to her elbow. The stone throbbed gently, red shining deep within its center; its pulse matched perfectly the beat of her heart.

Harry closed her eyes, breathed deeply in the faint salty air, and waited. She could feel the mark creeping along her skin, down her side and around her stomach and up her neck and back. It stretched across her cheek and forehead, much like the hand of a mother caressing her new born child. It crossed over her eyes, and she opened them, and she knew them to blaze yellow gold, as bright as the rising sun before her. She smiled and laughed, fire bubbling up before her eyes, and if anyone had heard her they would've heard only the crackle and pop of a small fire.

She could feel now the mark—now completely covering her—slow down as it came to meet with the other side coming around, and then—nothing. She sat quiet and still and calm, the only sounds her heart thrumming gently in her chest and her breath gliding smoothly in and out.

Harry closed her eyes once more and whispered inside her head, "I've done it; I've made it, after years and years. I am finished." And she simply let go. Of all her fears and of all her troubles, of all her loves and of all her passions, of all the things she had collected and earned and been burdened with from this world she set free, sailing and soaring like the gulls into the brightening sky. Her neck and shoulders relaxed, her head tilted slightly, and she watched in her mind as her earthly ties flew away.

Right then something warm prickled against her neck. Harry opened her eyes expectantly and saw to her delight blue and white fire splashing like water down her arms and pooling in her crossed legs and on the ground around her. It splashed and flooded over the edge of the bluff, bits of fire like jewels flaking off and spiraling upwards, spinning and glittering and tossing tiny rainbows against her and the rock beneath her. Blue fire eddied and whirled and shone around her; the fire overtook her hair and it instantly turned to yellow-white flames. The yellow flashed down her body, eating up the blue and the white and giving off a warm golden glow; her skin turned to ash and flaked away. Her eyes and her hair shone brightest of all, piercing the blue and pink sky. She was no longer Harriett Crewe from small town Istan of the Outlander people.

Now fire completely, she floated and flickered in the breeze, flaming prisms cascading off of her. She shifted up to the sky but paused, glancing down at the deep red stone left behind on the bluff. It no longer pulsed and was not as translucent as before. She swept back down and picked it up, holding it so her fiery lips just brushed its surface. She whispered a few words and carefully set it back down several steps away from the edge. It sat, tucked away in a crack in the ground, shining gently. She nodded in approval, her hair rippling around her face, and turned to the sky once more. The sun was just now over the horizon, shining full across the water and the small beach.

She smiled faintly to herself. It would be nice to hear someone call her by her real name again—she had begun to miss it greatly.

And, with face set to the rising sun and joy in the eyes of the girl once called Harry, the woman's fire blazed and brightened and she disappeared.

Luthe watched the fire envelope the girl, and was only mildly surprised when she did not scream and thrash from the flames, for his mother had told him stories and he had seen the red stone clutched tightly in her hand. And he had believed.

He watched from behind his tree as Harry—no, he corrected himself, for that surely was not her name any longer—as she whispered to the dull red stone. It brightened considerably, and it shone out from the small crack she placed it in. And then she vanished.

Now this surprised him, but he quickly shook it off and strode forward to the crevice. He gazed down at it, now hesitant, but slowly reached down anyway and picked the stone up. It was warm to the touch, pleasantly so, and its red shone from deep within itself, reflecting off and highlighting all the little patterns and veins within it.

Luthe had never seen an Isfahel in real life before, but his mother, who had seen many herself and had put them to paper, showed him many drawings and paintings of the fiery beings. He had learned of the red stones and of the properties they contained, and while it was no use to him—or any other human for that matter—it could still be used as a sort of… transportation method. He tucked the stone deep within his pocket, its warmth emanating outwards.

And then something caught his attention. He looked out at the blazing sunrise, his eyes watering from its brightness, but still he widened them in amazement. Very faintly he saw two ghost-like figures coming to meet each other, and wrapping their arms around the other. But they disappeared in a flicker.

Luthe smiled, and an odd thing came over him. He touched the red surface of the stone absently and a single thought bobbed to the surface of his mind and bubbled out of his mouth:

"You are home, Harimad."

The stone perked at the name it recognized and flared crimson and scarlet, reminiscing of its parent sun.


End file.
